Saturday, February 10, 2018

There's no use crying over spilled coffee

It's the weekend and my parents have come to visit me in the city. After lunch, it's customary for my parents to either make coffee at home or go out to the coffee shop. Because my mother wasn't feeling too well, I made the pilgrimage to get coffee. Two mediums with double milk for them and a large with two milks, two sugars (a.k.a. a double double) for me.

Arriving at home, I pass two coffees to my parents and place mine on the kitchen counter. I had a sip before and it needed a little bit extra sugar. After adding a spoon of it into the cup, I place the container in the cabinet, shut the door and tap the full cup with the edge of my hoodie.

What comes next is nothing short of a deluge of coffee.

In a few seconds, the liquid managed to get itself on the counter, floors, in front of the kitchen cabinets, inside of the kitchen cabinets, underneath the kitchen cabinets, on front of the dishwasher, underneath the dishwasher, inside of the dishwasher (still can't get my mind around that one), on the stove, on the side of the oven and underneath it, too.

The splash was so massive, the coffee managed to hit the other wall of the kitchen.

"What happened?" my mother asks as she begins to walk towards the kitchen.

"Nothing. The coffee spilled," I say as I go to the hall closet to grab a mop or towel.

"Whaaa?" I see my mother about to step into the puddle of brown liquid.

As she skulks back into the living room, I start to sop up as much of the coffee with a towel into a large bowl. Fuck, this is a lot of coffee, I think. How could one cup of coffee make such a mess?

With most of the coffee now in the bowl, I go to the sink and pour it out. In one quick swoosh, it splashes out of the sink and back onto the floor.

"Fuck," I say to myself.

"What happened?" asks my mother.

"It's alive. This coffee is alive," I say incredulously while looking down into the sink. My shoulders are slumped forward, in a pose of defeat. "I just poured it into the sink and it slipped out and back onto the floor. It's alive."

Feeling bad for me, my parents take a little of their own coffees and put it into another cup. I thank them because after 15 minutes of cleaning up this mess, I feel like I deserved something. And I was dehydrated.

True, there's no use crying over spilled coffee, but now I know to leave the cup far away from me when I grab something to sweeten it.